“Silence! Sons of bitches!” LeRois roared again, and the last of the pirates was quiet and all that LeRois could hear was the groaning of the merchantman’s captain, lying on the deck by his feet, rocking side to side in agony.
“Silence, cochon!” LeRois kicked the man hard in the ribs. The captain gasped. LeRois kicked him again, and the man was silent.
And then someone started screaming, a long, drawn-out shriek like some damned soul cast down. Made the hair on the back of LeRois’s neck stand up. “Who is screaming, son of bitch!? Who is that, I will kill them…” He looked around at the Vengeances standing on the deck. Their faces told him it was no one, the screaming was in his head, and even as he realized it, the sound died away.
He cocked his ear to the north. They were a league south of Cape Charles, having just that afternoon arrived at the wide mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And no sooner had they raised the Capes than the small merchantman, which they were at that moment plundering, had skirted the dangerous Middle Ground Shoal and sailed right into their arms.
For the first time in ten hours the pirates were silent, straining to hear whatever it was that LeRois was listening to. The only sound was the water slapping the hulls of the two ships, the slatting of sails and rigging and the occasional cracking as the two vessels, bound together by grappling hooks, rolled against each other.
Then LeRois heard it, just the faintest hint of sound carried on the offshore breeze.
Gunfire. Small arms going off in volleys.
He frowned and concentrated on the sound. Yes, it was small arms. The pirate’s hearing had always been extraordinary, and years of listening for that sound had conditioned him to pick it out even through the most primal din. He was certain that he heard it. But of late he had been hearing more and more things that no one else did.
He turned to William Darnall, who was standing beside him, ear cocked in the same direction. “Sounds like firelocks,” Darnall said, to LeRois’s vast relief. “Lot of ’em.”
“Smith Island, oui?” LeRois said, jerking his head in the direction of the muted gunfire.
“I reckon,” Darnall agreed. “That’s where she bears.”
LeRois listened for a moment more and then shrugged. “It is of no matter,” he said, and then, like men who could hold their breath no longer, the pirates resumed their shouting, their cursing, and their raucous destruction.
LeRois kicked the captain once more for good measure and then walked aft, using his sword as a walking stick, gouging it into the deck and jerking it free as he walked. The men of the Vengeance had torn open the liquor stores and the captain’s private reserve and were consuming it all as fast as they could. They were making great sport of terrorizing the few passengers on board, forcing them to drink great quantities of rum, making them curse the king and the governor and damn their own souls to hell.
The pirates would have their fun in that manner, but they would do no more harm than that. The merchantman had surrendered without a shot, surrendered at the first sight of LeRois’s black flag. By way of reward, the people aboard her would not be tortured and they would not be killed.
The merchantman’s crew had been compelled to break open the ship’s hatches and were swaying out all that was in the hold: tobacco, mostly, but also some fine cloth that had made its way up from the Spanish Main, as well as barrels of wine that would bring a fair price if not consumed by the Vengeances first. Along with that, the pirates would take the spare sails, some coils of rope, and the anchor cable to replace their own rotted one.
There had been gold as well, doubloons that had no doubt come up the coast with the Spanish cloth. Not many, but enough to share out among the men.
The captain, foolishly, had refused at first to reveal where the coin was hidden, but a few thumps with the flat of LeRois’s sword and a length of burning match tied between his fingers had ultimately rendered him quite vocal on the subject.
Even after they had the gold in hand, the pirates kept at the old man, burning the pieces of match down the full length of his fingers. They jeered as their victim, lashed to a ringbolt on the deck, had twisted and screamed and cursed. The man needed to be punished for his reticence. His example had assured the future cooperation of the people on board.
LeRois made his way over to where the passengers stood huddled against the rail, shrinking back from their tormenters. The few women among them were shielded by their husbands, as if that would do any good at all if the pirates chose to have them.
The Vengeances were screaming and running up and down the deck, dancing, firing off guns, drinking, cursing, banging drums, urinating, and hacking to pieces any part of the ship or rig within reach of their cutlasses.
LeRois was as drunk as any of them, and the weird images swam in front of him, lit up in frozen scenes by the flash of pistols. The screams seemed to come in layers, each building
on the other, building to a cacophony of anguish and terror. He found it harder and harder to tell if the images around him were a reality or a nightmare, if he was awake or asleep or dead and in hell.
He took another long drink from the bottle of rum in his hand, savoring the burn of the liquor going down his throat, the earthy reality of the pain. He looked over the passengers who were providing his men with so much amusement. They all looked wealthy enough, and he reckoned that any would do for the business he had in mind. Any that were married.
He grabbed the first couple he came to, a gentlemanly sort of fellow of middling age and his pretty wife whom he was shielding from the screaming tribe. He grabbed them both by their clothing and jerked them away from the rail and shoved them into the open deck. Before the gentleman could utter a word, LeRois pulled a pistol from his belt and pressed it against the woman’s forehead.
“Where are you from, cochon?” he asked the man, but the man remained silent, scowling at LeRois.
LeRois felt the snapping in his brain. He began to tremble. He cocked the lock of the pistol and jammed the muzzle against the woman’s head, pushing her back with the force. “Where are you from?” he screamed.
“Williamsburg.”
“You know many people, live in Williamsburg?”
The man hesitated. “Yes,” he said at last.
“Bien, bien, you fucking pig. You know a poxed son of a whore named Malachias Barrett?”
“No.”
“You certain, you son of a bitch?” He pressed the gun into the woman’s head. She shut her eyes and grimaced, her lip trembling as she waited for the end.
“No,” her husband said with finality.
“Very well,” said LeRois at last. “I have a message for you to deliver, and if you do, the belle femme she is okay, and if you don’t, then I take her first, then I give ’er to the crew, you understand?”
The man hesitated again, no doubt envisioning what his wife’s final days on earth would be like if he did not understand and obey. “Yes, I understand.”
LeRois squinted at him, trying to assess his sincerity. It was hard to think. He wished the screaming would stop, just for a moment.
Yes, he decided, the man would do as he said.
A shadow of a movement caught his eye, like a dark ghost overhead. He looked up, shot through with fear, but it was only his flag, his own flag, stirring in the breeze. It flogged and collapsed, the black flag with the grinning death’s-head and the cutlasses crossed below, an hourglass at the bottom to show that time was running out.
It was a flag that had already caused terror across the Caribbean and the Spanish Main, a flag for which the Royal Navy had been hunting for nearly twenty years.
And when he was done with the Chesapeake, he vowed, the people there would shit themselves just at the sight of it.